


Give Me the Number (if you can find it)

by ifeelbetter



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-10
Updated: 2009-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:00:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Eames accidentally switch phones in Bruges. In the few days between them realizing it and finally returning them, they each discover something unexpected about the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Me the Number (if you can find it)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the kink_meme back in 2009. The title comes from the Jim Croce song "Operator."

They _had_ left Bruges in a bit of a hurry and Cobb had just called Arthur's name at one point and tossed the phone to him, straight across the warehouse. It arched far too high in the air and Arthur didn't really look at it when it fell into his hands, he just pocketed it.

Ariadne had to decency to hand Eames his phone as she passed it over, the PASIV and her laptop trying to simultaneously elude her grip.

Arthur had to burn a couple reams of incriminating evidence (shredding was inefficient and imperfect. He knew this because of all the times he had re-assembled shredded documents during his more detailed bouts of research) and so it was only to be expected that the phone--tossed, caught, pocketed--went directly into the _Don't Bother Me With Bullshit_ folder in his brain.

Three days later, in a meeting with an architect who made his skin crawl and a perky blonde forger ("Call me Sugar," she'd said, twisting her hair and popping her gum), when the phone rang and the ringtone was (for starters and actual ringtone--Arthur had his phone programmed with a simple, chic ring like an actual phone, for fuck's sake) _Like A Virgin_ , Arthur really wished his internal filing system had flagged the phone when he had first caught it. When he pulled it out, ducking into the alleyway to get away from the bimbo's giggle, and saw the "Arthur calling" blinking on the screen, he realized (with a sinking feeling) what had happened.

"Did we switch phones in Bruges?" he said, answering.

"Hello to you too, darling," Eames said and Arthur could just hear the gloating about to happen. "How's Switzerland?"

"Do. You. Have. My. Phone."

"Glad to hear it. Me? Well, Buenos Aires is a dream this time of year--I should know, being a professional dreamer," Eames continued chattily.

" _Eames_."

"But funniest thing, Arthur, you'll never believe my shock when my phone told me my mother was calling."

"I bet you don't even have a mother, I bet you congealed from a pile of paisley poly-blends," Arthur said and then re-traced the conversation. "...wait, Eames. You--you didn't talk to my _mother_ , did you?"

"I couldn't just ignore her, now, could I? That would have been rude."

"Oh god," said Arthur, covering his eyes with his free hand.

"She invited me to New Jersey for my next holiday," Eames said smugly. "She said I sounded like such a nice young man."

"That's because she doesn't know you, obviously."

"She wanted to know if I could convince you to go home for Thanksgiving. Then she explained what Thanksgiving was, at length, and why it was important to be with family on that important family day," Eames said.

"I was _just_ home last month," Arthur said, his voice pitching dangerously close to the whine it reached when he talked to his mother for more than fifteen minutes. "I was home for three whole weeks. It was awful."

"She said I wasn't allowed to let you say things like that about your family," Eames repeated dutifully.

"You can't make me--" Arthur started to say but stopped himself just in time. "Eames. Never talk to my mother again."

"I make no promises."

"And give me back my phone."

"You give _me_ back _my_ phone," Eames said.

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and started counting down from ten in his head.

"You can't send it through the post," Eames pointed out. "That would be too dangerous."

"Agreed," said Arthur. "We'll have to meet somewhere."

"Call me when you're done in Switzerland," said Eames, "and I'll come find you."

"Fine."

Arthur ended the call abruptly. He scrolled through a few options and found the ringtones. He took great pleasure in instructing the phone it was not allowed to play _Like A Virgin_ anymore. Ever.

Though he did notice that his was the only number attached to that particular ringtone. He wasn't sure what Eames was trying to say there. 

Eames had already spoken to Arthur's mother so he figured there wasn't much privacy left to invade. He _could_ have left the phone in his hotel room and just waited till Arthur told him where to be and when and just handed it back, unexplored. He could have done that, it's true.

Instead, he kept it in the inside pocket of his jacket. (And he made sure the jacket was tweed the entire time because it gave him the most ridiculous thrill to think of something of Arthur's tucked in between layers of tweed.) He took it out occasionally and toyed with it, flipping it between his fingers or spinning it in circles on the nearest tabletop.

It only took two days before he made an attempt on the security code.

Then it only took two hours before he'd cracked it. Honestly. Phillipa's birthday. It was too obvious. It was basically _asking_ to be cracked into.

He wasn't surprised to find the NYTimes or the phrasebooks (sixteen different languages with the phrase "I will shoot you if I have to" as the most frequently searched term) or, really, the ap that just displayed the entire Periodic Table. GuitarToolkit, however, very much did surprise him. So did the Entertainment Tonight ap.

And chess. Of course there was chess.

Eames knew he didn't have half to many aps on his phone. If Arthur was feeling as inquisitive as he was, his search was going to reap far fewer results.

* * *

Arthur had already conceded to his curiosity before he hung up the phone on their first conversation. He'd done a cursory investigation first--guilt was unnecessary, he rationalized, because Eames had crossed a fucking _line_ when he talked to his mother--and then pocketed the phone and returned to the planning meeting going on inside.

Later, while the skeevy architect tried to explain (because Arthur gave up after three tries) the step with the Penrose stairs to the bimbo-forger, Arthur pulled out Eames's phone again. Eames hadn't bothered with a security code at all, Arthur noticed, and gloated at his presence of mind in programming his own phone with one.

There were only two aps. Shazam was predictable. Martha Stewart's Daily Recipes was less so. When could Eames possibly find the opportunity to make Chicken Roll-Ups with Goat Cheese and Arugula, after all? Arthur's day never left him space for cooking. He barely squeezed two meals a day in and one of those meals was the pot of coffee he drank on his way out the door in the morning. And who _rolls_ chicken?

He scrolled through Eames's recipes. Too much fucking chicken, he decided. Eames needed to branch out. He quickly signed him up for the Epicurious Recipes ap and selected a dinner plan involving tilapia and a suitable wine accompaniment. He marked them all as "Favorites."

"But stairs always go _up_ ," the bimbo said. She blew a pink bubble with her gum. The skeevy architect had to lean back to avoid it.

Arthur looked back at the phone. He downloaded an guide to knotting and decided to practice the Janisek Special until she stopped talking.

* * *

Arthur, Eames decided, was addicted to downloading aps. That was the only explanation for how much of his phone's memory was devoted to the blasted things. Half of them were ridiculous too--who needed an _ap_ for animal tracks when you could just as easily Google it? (And the Weather Channel? Really?)

Eames found the general concept of the application a bit daunting and useless so he got bored eventually with poking around Arthur's collection. Instead, he changed downloaded ringtones by the dozen and gleefully started programming all of Arthur's contacts with personalized songs.

(His own number got Jason Mraz's _I'm Yours._ )

* * *

Arthur decided to change Eames's background when his eyes started to hurt from looking at Eames's stupid face looking [even stupider than usual](http://images.buddytv.com/articles/meadowlands/image/tom-hardy.jpg), complete with trucker hat and toothpick.

Of course, that meant he ended up scrolling through the photos Eames had saved on the phone already. And there were _hundreds_.

Everyone Eames knew showed up at some point. There was a [ridiculous one of Dom](http://static.thehollywoodgossip.com/images/gallery/leonardo-dicaprio-pic.jpg) that Arthur sort of remembered Eames taking years ago, back when Dom had a sense of humor and a baby face. Mal, the real Mal, showed up all over the place, even with the [awful hairdo](http://www.prohaircut.com/images/marion_cotillard_ll_99394.jpg) that they'd all teased her about for days.

Something caught in Arthur's throat, seeing that one. He could see where Mal was looking away, not at the camera, and he knew Dom was laughing just outside the frame. She hadn't minded, not at all, and there was something so absurdly beautiful in her profile, even with the almost-pompadour.

None of the photos had Arthur in them, he realized. He felt a different sort of tightness from that.

And then he found the folder. The folder that Eames had, with characteristic cheekiness, called "Darling." It was _filled_ with Arthur.

Some of them he remembered Eames taking. He knew the [one](http://www.fusedfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/joseph_gordon_levitt_in_uncertainty.jpg) from when he was still dating Lynn (two years ago? More? Before Mal, that he was sure of). He had only dated her for three weeks. Eames had been...around. Just. Always around.

And he remembered [the beach](http://trendology.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/joseph-gordon-levitt-3-0609-lg-163248.jpg) in Italy. Eames had teased him for the waistcoat and then stolen his cigarette.

It was only at that point that Arthur realized all the photos of him had names. Not just a series of numbers and the .png at the end. They had _titles_.

The one from the beach was called "willbethedeathofme."

* * *

It was totally by accident that Eames ended up in the unsent messages area of Arthur's phone. He was doing two things at once and he never clicked the right thing on phone when he tried to multitask and the he was suddenly looking at his own name, repeated ad nauseam. His brow wrinkled and he dropped the hoover.

All those unsent texts. What on earth would Arthur _not_ send them? What would he _want_ to send to him?

He opened the first one.

_Paul Ricoeur: "Forgetting then designates the unperceived character of the perseverence of memories, their removal from the vigilance of consciousness." Thoughts?_

Arthur saved that two weeks ago. Eames did some quick mental calculations and, yes, Arthur had been reading something big and stuffy-looking in the back of the warehouse two days before they had to abandon that job and run for it. And Eames sort of remembered him looking up suddenly when Eames said something to Ariadne in passing and he'd pulled out his phone...why hadn't he sent the text?

Why could Eames remember the way Arthur's head had jerked up but not a single piece of the conversation with Ariadne?

He moved on.  
 _Paisley: droplet-shaped vegetable pattern of Indian or Persian origin. Often called "Persian pickles" by American quilters or "Welsh pears." THIS is something you want to align yourself with?!_

Eames snorted.

_I could re-organize Starbucks for greater efficiency in two hours. No one would have to wait more than thirty seconds for a coffee again._

Eames smiled at that, fondness rushing over him. He could imagine Arthur in line at a Starbucks, his frustration taken out on the screen of his phone and the perfect solution so very obvious to him and how he'd deplore the utter stupidity of anyone who couldn't see it.

_sorry_

Nothing else, just that one word. Eames couldn't even remember whether they'd been in the same city on that date, whether they'd even spoken.

He had to put the phone away then. He turned on a sports game until the clenching in his chest subsided.

* * *

Arthur found that the folder expanded exponentially, like some sort of rabbit-hole down which he could just fall and fall. There was the photo from [the hospital](http://www.thecinemasource.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Joseph_Gordon-Levitt-5-Brick2.jpg) in Poughkeepsie when Arthur hadn't mentioned it to anyone but they'd been half-an-hour's drive away from his parents' house and he'd had this horrible twinge of homesickness. That one Eames had called, presciently, "noplacelikehome." Like he knew what Arthur had been thinking.

It was amazing how many of the photos from the day with Lynn and Eames were of Arthur looking away from her, towards Eames. He hadn't realized at the time.

Maybe Eames just existed in the past, maybe he spent hours scrolling through his memories. Maybe he filled long, boring train rides with them. Maybe it didn't mean anything that it was Arthur who got his own folder. Maybe it meant something.

He found [a photo](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l5z2wwXIQE1qck2lso1_500.jpg) from the day he'd spent with Eames and Ariadne about a year before. They'd started in a park--why had they been in the park? Were they tailing someone? Or was it something completely innocuous?--and, by the end of the evening, they'd drunk all the alcohol in the state of New York. Arthur remembered because Eames spent the whole evening leaning in, accusing him of drunkenness with a wobbly finger digging into his the second button of Arthur's (by that point) less-than-crisp Oxford shirt.

* * *

Eames tried another batch of texts.

_Iam. SOBERbfjh_

Over a year ago for that one. Eames tried desperately to place it. He remembered having to babysit Arthur and Ariadne while he was trying to study which hand nannies tend to use to push their strollers in Central Park until he had to admit that work would not be done that day. Arthur's dimples were simply too distracting.

There had been drinking later that evening, probably. Nothing too extreme, just a few simple drinks and then they'd parted for three months. Yet Arthur almost told him, via a text, that he was sober.

Why did Arthur never hit Send?

_Sunday is the new Friday._

What did that one even mean? Would it have made sense a year and a half ago if Arthur had sent it?

_If I asked you to come here, would you?_

If Eames took that the way he wanted to--the way his heart leaped up and demanded he do--where was Arthur in it? If he hit Send, it would have moved out of this tiny black rectangle and then, _then_ Eames would have known Arthur was talking, Arthur meant something. But without the Send, what was this? What was a collection of tiny messages rolled up, encapsulated like a ship in a bottle, never moving outward?

Just as Eames's thumb hovered over the screen (right over the question mark), it rang.

Ariadne calling. 

"Arthur's phone, missing in action," he said, answering.

"Eames? Why are you answering Arthur's phone?" she asked and then--he could practically hear the gears begin to turn in her head, even with an ocean between them--she squeaked. " _Eames_. Are you and Arthur--"

He interrupted. It seemed the polite thing to do, no matter what his mother had always told him. "We got them mixed up in Bruges. We'll be trading them back as soon as he's done in Switzerland."

"So he's got your phone? Because I really need to ask him--"

"Yeah, he should pick up if you call my phone. Probably. He did when I called me."

"Right. Thanks. I'll just--"

"Ariadne. Does Arthur..." Eames began to ask but, frowning, found he couldn't find a phrasing for his question that didn't make it painfully obvious that he'd been snooping around on Arthur's phone.

"Does Arthur _what_?" she asked impatiently.

"Does he ever text you?" Eames asked, settling for the least damning version of his question. "I mean, do you know if he ever texts anyone?"

"Sometimes, I guess. It's not like he's ever said anything _against_ texting."

"But he texts _you_?"

"Nothing significant. Just your basic 'meet me at the corner of--' and 'bring me a coffee' sort of thing." She waited a beat. "Eames, have you found something on Arthur's phone?" She managed to make 'something' sound far too salacious for anything related to Arthur.

"No! What? _Something_? What were you expecting me to find?"

"I don't know. A subscription to Miss Cleo? A phone sex addiction?"

Eames nearly chocked. "Neither of those. Honestly, Ariadne. Your mind. I lose hope sometimes."

"I think you mean you're deeply impressed and horrifically jealous."

"Or not."

"Whatevs. Look, I really do need to get in touch with Arthur. But you be good, OK?"

"Yes, mom."

She hung up. Eames sighed and stared at the phone again, wondering whether it was worth the strain on his psyche to continue to explore the horde of unsent, saved messages. He'd already lost sleep over it.

He was standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk with a street that stretched down, seemingly towards infinity. He remembered early art classes and lessons about vanishing points and he had the urge to take a photo of it, just to keep it in his mind. There were telephone wires criss-crossing the street, making measured units out of the retreating asphalt.

But it wasn't his phone.

He considered his options. Would he be respectful of personal property and treat this phone as the private property of someone else, it's precious available memory stretched thin already? Or would he be the thief he really was and stake a claim in this thing he held in his hands simply because it was in _his_ hands now and what kind of thief believes in private property anyway?

He snapped a picture. He made it Arthur's new background.

* * *

The thing was...Arthur had gotten in the habit of writing little tidbits in his phone, directed in only the most hypothetical sense to Eames. The first dozen or so had been an exercise in restraint: he thought of them as the alternative to pitching a fit in the middle of a planning session and, if he was feeling particularly disinclined towards patience, shooting Eames in the face. In the real world.

Then it had...evolved.

So much so that he was halfway through a text in one of the planning sessions (another one that had devolved into a extraction-for-dummies lesson for Sugar The Chronically Blonde) before he remembered that this wasn't his phone, it was Eames's.

The text was simple: _Remind me never to work with forgers with stripper names again. And stop me from taking a hit out on Candy._

He looked at it when he'd finished, the recipient's name still un-filled. He typed in his own name, just to see what it looked like.

The thing was...it didn't seem so strange to hit "Send" when it was, strictly speaking, a note to himself.

The thing was...he actually sent it.

* * *

 _Remind me never to work with forgers with stripper names again. And stop me from taking a hit out on Candy._

Eames looked down at the text for just a moment before, on a whim, he replied. He didn't think too much about the words of the reply (a lie but he could have been worse), just typed them in and hit Send.

_like you know any hitmen_

* * *

Arthur huffed a laugh. What kind of criminal did Eames think he was? Like everything he had ever put any effort into in his entire life, Arthur took being a criminal very seriously. Two weeks after he and Dom had gone on the run, he'd put on his best suit and sauntered into a bar he knew for a fact had mafia ties, and made some Connections. He could order a hit if he wanted to.

_Oh ye of little faith._

He sent the reply and pocketed the phone, tuning back into the planning session. Candy looked like she might have just about gotten the hang of the blueprints (Penrose stairs and all). They'd probably be able to do a trial run soon.

He didn't check the phone for any replies for hours. In between, he'd gone under with Candy to see if she really could manage to negotiate the paradoxes (she couldn't, not for at least three more tries and Arthur may have shouted about how he'd always thought it was a myth that some people only use 10% of their brains but then he'd been introduced to her and had to re-evaluate), stormed out of the warehouse, cleaned all of his guns in an effort to curb his temper, and re-designed the layout without the majority of the paradoxes.

By the time he remembered the phone, it was well into the night.

_skepticism is the beginning of faith darling_

And Arthur would have to have been made of stone to not melt a little at the idea of Eames quoting Oscar Wilde.

So he gave one back:

_I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best._

He'd already sent it before he thought of the time, that Eames might not want a text (even an Oscar Wilde quotation) so late. But Eames could be anywhere. He could be in any timezone, at any point in the day Arthur was leaving or the one he was about to enter. He was in flux.

It was one of the things Arthur liked best about him. He had no anchors.

* * *

It was probably the most elitist game of tag ever. Eames had tossed Arthur a gobble, Arthur identified and one-upped him on the return volley. Eames wondered if Arthur could give a proper citation if asked.

He looked up at a clock on a bank and did some quick mental calculation. If it was half past eleven for him, in Zurich it must be...somewhere in the middle of the night.

He ignored the text, figuring Arthur needed the uninterrupted sleep.

But, a few hours and quite a few drinks later, he opened the depository of unsent messages and picked the most confusing one. He had spent a long afternoon staring at it only a day or two ago and it had stuck with him, like a catchy tune. He held the phone in front of his face, wobbling only slightly.

_I'd make you concrete shoes if I thought I could keep you._

He shouldn't have hit Send, _obviously_ , because then the game was up. Arthur would know he'd poked around and he'd know that Eames had found this cache of...things. And he didn't want Arthur to know he knew...

His head hurt and he was confused and tired and more than a little drunk.

So he hit Send.

Consequences be damned.

* * *

Arthur heard the phone _ping_ on his bedside table. It was early, too early to admit to being awake quite yet. He tried to ignore it, to drift back to sleep but it wasn't like he had any nice dreams to lure him in.

He sighed and reached for the lamp next to his hotel-issue bed. There was a bit of light coming in through the window (dawn was underway) but it wasn't quite enough to see by. He pulled the phone towards him, clicking the text open as he rubbed his eyes with the other hand.

_I'd make you concrete shoes if I thought I could keep you._

Reading it was like being slapped.

He stared at the screen, suddenly wide awake.

Absurdly, the first thing that popped into his head was a Bill Cosby routine his mother used to play for him when he was being too rowdy. The joke was that Cosby gets nervous when doctors say "oops" because he knows what he means when he says "oops" and he's hoping the doctor doesn't mean that too.

Arthur's second and third (and fourth and fifth) thoughts had more to do with _invasion of privacy_ and _dear God, what did I leave in there?_ but the first one was still Bill Cosby.

_I know what I meant when I wrote that but what does he mean?_

It was like the time in Atlantic City all over again, the second time they'd worked together. No Cobb, no Mal, no other familiar faces. And Eames had gambled like Arthur had never seen anyone gamble before. There had been a point when he'd just won ten thousand dollars and he looked up at Arthur and Arthur could see the way he was just seconds before a decision.

Arthur knew, without checking a mirror, that that's what his own face looked like right then.

Eames had brushed his fingers up the stack of blue chips and by the time he tapped his fingertip against the top chip, he'd made up his mind.

Arthur stared at the screen of his ( _Eames's_ ) phone. He scrolled through Eames's contacts backwards, starting from Z, and by the time he reached his own name, he'd made up his mind.

He made the call.

* * *

Eames felt sobriety hit him like a 10-ton truck when the phone started to ring.

"Fuck," he swore. To answer or not to answer, that is the question.

He answered.

"I'd forgive _you_ if you--" he started to explain.

Arthur interrupted him. "That's fine, Eames. I just have to ask a question."

"You...have to ask a question."

"Yes. Will you answer it? Honestly?"

Eames couldn't suppress the laugh but it came out more like a breath than a sound. "I always try to be honest."

"What did you mean by sending me my text?"

Eames scrubbed a hand down his face. Too much honesty. "You tell me what _you_ meant by writing it first."

"I asked you first."

"I was just exploring, darling. Just seeing what I could find."

"I said it was fine. I don't like to repeat myself." Arthur's voice sounded strained but Eames couldn't ever read Arthur without the full package in front of him. Arthur was too good at guarding himself.

"Did you find anything? I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"You'll tell me why you sent me my text if I tell you what I've learned about you from your phone." It wasn't a question. Arthur was just repeating the offer.

"Yeah."

"Truthfully."

"It's likely."

"I found..." Arthur paused. "I found your photos. Of me."

That surprised Eames. "You already knew about the photos. You were there when I took them."

Arthur made a noise that made Eames wish again that he could see his face. "I knew you _took them_ but I didn't--I just didn't know, OK?"

"In the text--you said you wanted to make me concrete shoes. You want to keep me."

"You have an excellent grasp on the substance of the text, yes."

"Maybe I mean it more." Eames listened desperately into the silence on the other end. "Maybe you need something to keep you in place more than I do."

"I'm as solid as they come, Eames."

They shouldn't be having this conversation on a phone, Eames realized with sudden clarity. 

"Can I come to you?" Eames asked. "You'd--you wouldn't mind, right? If I came to Zurich?"

"We're finishing today. If I don't shoot the blonde first. I'll meet you halfway."

"That's the middle of the Atlantic."

"Not literally, Eames. I meant--I'll meet you somewhere. A symbolic halfway point."

"What's a symbolic halfway point for us?" Eames asked, smiling.

"Nagoya?"

"Too close to Saito. Hyderabad?"

"Yours. Melbourne?"

"God hates Australia. But I could manage Auckland."

"You could manage Auckland," Arthur repeated in his best long suffering voice.

"I can be there by tomorrow night."

"It'll take me a day more," said Arthur.

"But you'll be there."

Arthur waited a beat and Eames felt like he was being raked across hot coals.

"Yeah."

* * *

The job went down without a hitch (despite a moment when Bimbo The Forging Wonder almost answered her own name instead of her cover's when the mark introduced himself) and Arthur was on a plane a half hour later, a couple hundred thousand dollars richer.

He slept restlessly on the plane some but spent most of the flight tapping his leg nervously. The woman sitting next to him glared at him every half hour or so.

When he got off the plane, he had to pat down all his pockets looking for sunglasses. It was only then--despite all the nervous obsessing over details he'd been doing in his head since Eames suggested meeting in person--that he realized he didn't know where he was meeting Eames in particular.

But he'd been through all of Eames's photos. And this was a warm, balmy sort of place. He already knew where he'd find Eames.

He got to the MJ Savage Memorial Park around noon. A view like that, he knew Eames would be there. He knew it just by looking at a map and seeing the patch of green cupping the shore.

It was a gorgeous view. He took [a picture](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B1_RNcIWxRQ/RqaUq3w24sI/AAAAAAAAAU8/fgns8vH_MYo/s400/MJ%2BSavage%2BMemorial%2BPark%2B%287%29.JPG) of it with Eames's phone. It seemed like an Eames sort of thing to do.

"Adding to my collection?" said Eames, appearing at Arthur's elbow.

Arthur shrugged. "Seemed the least I could do." He held the phone out. "Your phone, Mr. Eames."

Eames took it. "Many thanks. And here's yours." He pocketed his own and pulled out Arthur's, handing it over. "Ariadne hoped I might find a sex hotline or something salacious on your phone."

"She may have mentioned it. She was disappointed, I gather."

"She wasn't the only one." Eames smiled in that way that _should_ be a smirk or a leer but just seems too warm to be either. "I am curious about the guitar ap, though. Do you play?"

"Since I was five. You cook?"

"Hardly ever. Just chicken, really." Eames had a pair of sunglasses on as well. Aviators. Arthur wondered whether he'd be able to see his own reflective glasses in Eames's and whether there'd be an infinity between them.

"You should expand your repertoire. Try fish."

"You should learn how to press 'Send' every now and then." Eames tilted his head slightly, considering Arthur.

"I just--" Arthur began. He tried again. "Sometimes...I just want to talk to you."

"Sometimes I just want to look at you," Eames said. "I can think of an easy solution. You stick with me, darling, and we can have all sort of conversation. I can go for hours on Tennyson. And you should just try and stop me if we ever get on the subject of Monteverdi. Or Japanese baseball."

Arthur grinned. It made him look like a child, dimples and all, but he didn't really care.

"Sometimes I don't want to talk," he warned.

Eames shrugged. "Alright, fine, we can take breaks--" he started to say, looking resignedly melancholic.

Arthur had to pull him in and press a solid kiss to his mouth to stop him from speaking.

"Not that kind of not talking," he said.

Eames huffed a surprised laugh that tickled across Arthur's lips, they were that close.

"Someday," Eames said, "I swear you'll be the death of me."

"Only when I make you concrete shoes," Arthur promised and pulled him back in again.


End file.
